The inventive concept relates to the field of semiconductor devices, and more particularly, to refresh for dynamic random access memory devices.
Semiconductor devices widely used in high-performance electronic systems have experienced improvements in both capacity and speed. A dynamic random access memory (DRAM) is a volatile memory which stores data corresponding to charge in capacitors. The charge stored in the capacitor may leak such that the data therein may be retained for a only limited time before degradation occurs to the point where the state of the data may be unreliable.
Various policies have been implemented to address data retention in DRAMs. For general-purpose use of the DRAM in various fields, most of the various policies are executed by a memory controller or a Central Processing Unit (CPU).